Guy Bala

Memories, Thoughts, and Dreams Guy Bala

A Michigan Dearbornite, Guy Bala began his performance work as a circus acrobat. From there, he quickly advanced to teaching gymnastics and choreographing performance pieces of various genres for his students. He has appeared in a variety of staged musicals as principle dancer, Fiddler on the Roof, Applause, Mame, Follies, and the King and I, to name a few. He later studied modern ballet in Royal Oak, Michigan and also studied and performed with the Ann Arbor Civic Ballet. While living on the beaches of SE FL, Bala was engaged in 1991 to spearhead the recruitment and training of one of the largest professional (upwards of 800 active) volunteer corps in the U. S. at the Broward Center of the Performing Arts in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. He interlocked a mission of impacting the love of the arts with the necessary hospitality nature required to successfully service as many as 25,000 weekly patrons. During this tenure, he also produced a documentary, The Birth of an Arts Center, depicting the anticipation and suspense of the Broward Center's premier performance as they grandly opened with The Phantom of the Opera. Following the Broward Center tenure, Bala then moved to a time and place of quiet reflectiveness. He settled in Highlands, North Carolina, within the Nantahala National Forest. Here he introduced a poetry reading program, "Poets at the Podium," for the Bascom Center for the Visual Arts. He also wrote "A Mountain's Sojourn" which was published in the Highlander on September 4th 2001. Today, Bala resides in Tampa, Florida with his two rescues, Aki and Rafi ki. When not working on his next artistic venture, he can be found in the kitchen, crafting a new gourmet dish. A true bon vivant!